Mesoamerican Countries Collaborate on Forest Monitoring for REDD+
A regional workshop "Opportunities for International Cooperation to Strengthen Forest Monitoring and REDD+ Readiness in Mesoamerica" took place in Mexico City, Mexico on the 29 and 30 of July.
The workshop was organized by the National Forestry Commission (CONAFOR), through the “Reinforcing REDD+ and South-South Cooperation” Project, funded by the Government of Norway in collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
|The regional workshop on Opportunities for International Cooperation to Strengthen Forest Monitoring and REDD+ Readiness in Mesoamerica held in Mexico City, Mexico
The general objective of the workshop was to identify the collaboration needs and priorities related to forest monitoring and Measurement Reporting and Verification (MRV) for REDD+ in the region, in order to provide inputs to the development of a South-South Cooperation Strategy for enabling technical capacities in this area. This cooperation strategy is due to be finalized by the end of 2013, to be followed by implementation of the cooperation activities identified. The workshop served as a forum to validate and prioritize REDD+ monitoring and MRV capacities and needs in the region.
Participants included REDD+ monitoring and MRV specialists from Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama and Dominican Republic. These countries, along with Belize, represent the partner countries of the Mesoamerican Environmental Sustainability Strategy (EMSA). EMSA is the cooperation platform being used as a foundation for this cooperation on forest monitoring for REDD+.
In addition, there were representatives in attendance from multilateral programmes and bilateral initiatives providing relevant support in the region. These participants included the UN-REDD Programme Participating Organizations of FAO and UNDP, GIZ, the United States SilvaCarbon Initiative, the World Bank and the Central American Commission on Environment and Development (CCAD).
During the workshop, discussions led to the identification of four main categories of cooperation related to the development of national forest monitoring systems: data-sharing, sharing of lessons learned, technological platforms, and policy/technical dialogues. Participants emphasized the importance of drawing on existing regional platforms and respecting the national circumstances of countries. Another major theme of the workshop was the importance of the multilateral and bilateral initiatives working collaboratively to maximize the resources devoted to the region.
Interviews with workshop participants in Spanish are online. For more information on the workshop itself as well as the Mexico-Norway “Reinforcing REDD+ Readiness in Mexico and enabling South-South cooperation” project generally, please refer to: www.mrv.mx.